by Jim Murphy
The doctors did have a bit of negative news. They worried that the unclothed giant might provoke the village women to have sinful thoughts and suggested that it be covered. According to the Daily Standard, “for modesty’s sake, an improvised ‘fig leaf’ was kept over the loins.”
Another excited murmur rippled through the gathered crowd later in the afternoon. It turned out that the most recent arrivals from Syracuse included two newspaper reporters, an important businessman, and a celebrated lecturer on scientific matters, John Boynton.
Boynton was a notable person in the Syracuse community, though admiration for the man was tempered by what some considered his odd behavior. Boynton’s career had been one of constant achievement and advancement. After attending Columbia College in New York City, and St. Louis Medical College, he set up a successful medical practice. Eventually, he turned his attention to other pursuits, including taking part in a geological survey of Lake Superior (where he discovered numerous artifacts belonging to prehistoric cultures) and as a prospector in California.
After this, he returned to Syracuse where he took up inventing, securing thirty-six patents for such items as a portable fire extinguisher, a soda fountain, a way to make carbonic acid gas (which produces the bubbles in soda), and several torpedo designs that were used during the Civil War. He added to his considerable fame and fortune by going on the lecture circuit to discuss geology, mineralogy, and relics from ancient cultures.
John Boynton as he looked when a member of the Mormon church. (© Utah State Historical Society)
Despite being a very successful person, his past still trailed him. People viewed Boynton with some suspicion in large part because he had been an early member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more commonly known as the Mormon church). This branch of Christianity was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 because he believed that all other Christian churches had drifted away from the true teachings of Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles. He also said that a man could marry more than one wife and insisted that the Bible supported his position on this sensitive issue. Smith and the Latter-day Saints were criticized strongly by other religious groups and were repeatedly attacked physically.
In 1832, an angry crowd dragged Joseph Smith from a farmhouse and tarred and feathered him. (© The Granger Collection)
Boynton joined the Latter-day Saints two years after its founding and rose to become one of its most powerful and important leaders. And even though he later broke from the church and was excommunicated, many people still distrusted him. He made the situation worse by some of his unusual actions, which included being married in a hot-air balloon. Older, more conservative folk thought he was making fun of the sacred institution of marriage.
Boynton even managed to shock and amuse the crowd at Newell’s farm. Instead of observing the giant from a distance, the lecturer ordered that the hole be bailed of water. Then he stepped down into the oozy muck and began to dig with his fingers under the giant’s neck. Once he’d done this, he cradled the head in his arms and began touching, smelling, and even licking the face for several minutes.
John Boynton and his fiancée, Mary West Jenkins, moments before they sailed up in a hot-air balloon to be married. (© Getty Images)
When the examination was finished, a mud-splattered Boynton turned to face the crowd and announced in an authoritative voice that the giant was not a petrified human. Instead, it was a man-made statue, probably sculpted by French Jesuit missionaries sometime in the seventeenth century. He went on to state that it was made of local limestone and later buried so enemies of the missionaries couldn’t destroy it. Not many in the crowd agreed with Boynton, but no one openly questioned such a noted celebrity.
While everyone talked over this latest development, Boynton went to Newell and urged him to give him the giant. His reasons were simple: Only a scientist such as himself would know how to handle the giant without damaging it, and then be able to exhibit it properly. Boynton probably had other motives for wanting to control the giant. Even if it was merely an old statue, being able to display it and explain it to the public would certainly boost his reputation and his income.
Newell was still exhausted from his two long days as the giant’s owner, but he was no fool. After all, he had already been offered a great deal of money for the giant; why hand it over to anyone—even a famous scientist—for free? Still, he must have said he would consider Boynton’s request because the lecturer then announced that he would return the next day to fence off the giant to protect it from the curious public.
The crowd on Sunday was estimated to number well over two hundred people. With the first newspaper stories slated to appear on Monday, Cardiff and Newell would soon find themselves the hottest story in America.
When Newell woke on Monday morning, a crowd was already assembled on the road in front of his house. But instead of inviting everyone to step around behind the barn to see his discovery, he informed them that they would have to wait.
Newell then hired a number of neighbors to enlarge the pit and to set up a pump to drain water. Once this work was completed, he had several of them build a crude fence around the pit while the rest went to a local store to buy a tent that measured twelve by twenty-four feet. By noon, he had transformed a muddy hole into a small business and opened the flaps to visitors.
Two of his neighbors were stationed at each opening and told to collect fifty cents from anyone who wanted to view the giant. Store owner Billy Houghton (the first person to declare the stone giant a petrified man) was stationed inside the tent to tell folk about the discovery and answer their questions.
Houghton was a natural master of ceremonies. He regularly chatted up customers in his store, telling them about his line of goods, the weather, local and national politics, or whatever else might pass the time. It’s possible that Newell also gave him advice, especially about playing up how ancient and mysterious the stone giant was.
One visitor, Andrew White, noticed that no matter how excited the crowd might be outside the tent, once they stepped inside the mood changed dramatically. “An air of great solemnity pervaded the place,” he reported. “Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper.” It was then that Houghton began his lecture.
A small crowd outside the exhibition tent on Newell’s farm. (Onondaga Historical Association Museum & Research Center)
A Syracuse newspaper took a humorous view of Houghton’s show. “A man stands at the mouth of the excavation to explain the good points of the ‘giant.’ He . . . ‘punches’ the breast of the statue with a long pole, and tells you tragic words: ‘He’s holler there!’ You involuntarily listen to see if he does ‘holler,’ but no sound [issues] from the finely chiseled lips, [so] you listen to the remark accompanying the next punch of the long pole. Thumping the statue near the thigh: ‘He’s solid there! Guess that ’ere is about the biggest leg you ever saw! Why, heavens and earth, a man could hardly reach around that leg!’”
Houghton would then go on in a dramatic voice to describe the moment the well-diggers’ shovels hit the foot and how the body was uncovered. Next he might wave his pointer from the giant’s toes to his head and tell how tall he was, asking the crowd to imagine such a man walking through the valley with the rest of his family. He also mentioned what the esteemed men of science had said about the discovery, though he usually shrugged aside Boynton’s notion that it was a statue as “jest one feller’s opinion.”
Questions followed, but most people took this time to express their own ideas about the find. A few were skeptical, such as the farmer who said he would believe it was a real man only after one of the giant’s legs were cut off and he could see “the marrow of his bones.” Most, however, were like the woman who exclaimed, “Nothing in the world can ever make me believe that he was not a living being. Why, you can see the veins in his legs.”
Some viewers noted the way the body was twisted with one arm behind the back, as if contorted in pain. Most moved beyon
d this sense of violence to focus on the face. “A kindly benevolent smile plays over the features,” said a writer for the New England Homestead, “and as one looked upon it he could not help feeling that he was in the presence of a great and superior being.”
Visitors on that Monday and afterward overwhelmingly believed the giant had once been a living person. They even used the word “he” when talking about the discovery. Whatever they believed, they came in droves because they needed to see the great wonder with their own eyes. Over four hundred customers went through the tent on Monday, earning Newell a neat $200 ($3,250 in today’s money).
One of the first reports about the Cardiff Giant appeared in the Syracuse Daily Standard’s Monday edition. (Onondaga Historical Association Museum & Research Center)
The number of visitors, which included several curious scientists, only increased in the days following as more newspaper articles began to appear. On Monday, the Daily Standard ran a bold headline proclaiming: “A NEW WONDER! Petrified Giant.” and explained that “just now this valley is the scene of an excitement, in the finding of a supposed petrifaction of a human being—a giant.”
The Syracuse Daily Courier declared the giant an “IMPORTANT DISCOVERY” and said the “quiet little village of Cardiff . . . was thrown into an excitement without precedent” by a discovery that was “positively beyond the comprehension or understanding of the wise men of the valley.”
By Tuesday, the giant was front-page news in New York City—with papers in Philadelphia; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; and as far away as San Francisco posting articles soon afterward. Telegraph messages announcing the sensational find were sent humming to hundreds of big and small towns throughout the country. The giant was also beginning to acquire a set of nicknames that included the Onondaga Giant, the Lafayette Wonder, the Petrified Giant, the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Wonder of the Age, and, of course, the Cardiff Giant.
It seemed that everyone was hungering for news about the giant, and for good reason. Between 1861 and 1865, newspapers had been filled with stories of terrible Civil War battles, along with seemingly endless lists of the 630,000 killed and over 1 million wounded. Even as the war was ending, the nation was plunged into deep mourning by the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, which was followed by the politically turbulent years of his successor, Andrew Johnson. And just the month prior to the discovery, an attempt by Jay Gould and James Fisk to manipulate the price of gold had put the nation into a massive economic depression.
The Cardiff Giant offered readers something positive and inspiring to think about, something to distract them from more troubling news. The giant even cast his long shadow over the November elections, and one issue in particular. The United States Congress had submitted the Fifteenth Amendment to extend full voting rights to African-American citizens. Three-quarters of the states had to ratify the amendment by vote for it to become law. But even with President Ulysses S. Grant backing it, the amendment was still eight states short of passage.
An anti–Fifteenth Amendment campaign poster with stereotypical cartoon drawing of an African American. (Library of Congress)
The amendment had actually passed in New York in April 1869, but that didn’t end the fight. Democrats opposed the measure, mainly because almost every African American who managed to vote in the previous election had done so for Republican candidates. Democrats vowed to rescind the approval if they took control of the state legislature in the upcoming election. Most Republicans also opposed the amendment, but decided to back it to gain African-American voters. The campaign turned vicious, with name-calling and personal insults common.
But as November and the election approached, politics was no longer the main topic of conversation. The Cardiff Giant was. And newspapers (especially those backing Republican candidates) were happy to move less pleasant news to their back pages and turn their front pages over to the giant. As the New York Commercial Advertiser lamented, “Compared with the Cardiff graven image, the election is nowhere.”
In addition to being one of the first to study the Cardiff Giant, Andrew White would go on to be president of Cornell University, president of the American Historical Society, and ambassador to Germany and Russia. (Library of Congress)
All of this attention created immense and intense interest in the giant and boosted business for Newell. Not even what is described as “extremely unpleasant, uncomfortable [wet] weather” slowed the flow of customers. Andrew White was amazed to see “the roads . . . crowded with buggies, carriages, and even omnibuses from the city, and with lumber-wagons from the farms—all laden with passengers.” On Wednesday alone, over fifteen hundred people flocked to Cardiff. Newell’s first week’s take was approximately $1,200 ($19,500).
The growing fame of the giant also brought Newell additional business offers. The farmer found himself increasingly involved in lengthy, secret negotiations with wealthy individuals eager to be a part of the action. There was even a rumor floating around that the famous showman P. T. Barnum was interested in purchasing the Cardiff Giant. By the end of the week, Newell had turned over the operation of the sideshow to Houghton so he could attend one meeting after another.
Just one week before, Newell was a simple and only modestly successful farmer. Now he was at the center of a story that was being talked about throughout the nation, plus he had a growing new business in place. As he prepared for bed that Friday night, he must have been very happy with the rapid turn of events in his life. What he hadn’t bothered to tell any of his friends or neighbors was that his secret business negotiations were going to cause even bigger changes in the days ahead.
This cartoon, which appeared in a pamphlet called The Onondaga Giant, shows the crowd inside the tent on Stub Newell’s farm. (The New York State Historical Association Library)
What had happened was very simple: Newell had decided to sell an interest in the giant to a group of men. It turned out that P. T. Barnum hadn’t wanted to pursue a business deal, at least not right then. So the bidding came down to one wealthy individual and two business syndicates made up of other wealthy men.
Naturally, each time one made an offer, Newell went to the others to see if they would make a higher bid. Eventually, the two syndicates joined forces and were able to offer Newell $30,000 ($487,000) for three-quarters interest. A one-third portion of this amount was paid in cash, with the rest promised for future payment with bank notes. Newell agreed to the terms on Saturday morning with one provision—that the group allow an old friend of his, William Spencer, to also buy into the deal.
The new partners wasted little time in making changes to the existing show. The first thing they did on Saturday was hire Colonel Joseph H. Wood to run the operation. Wood was the owner of the Randolph Street Museum in Chicago and another in Philadelphia. His museums were collections of exotic stuffed animals from around the world, human oddities, and such curios as the Great Zeuglodon, a ninety-six-foot-long assembly of assorted bones that Wood claimed was a prehistoric whale. Wood immediately set out to bring Newell’s humble country show up to big-city standards.
Albert Koch assembled this made-up sea monster in 1845 from random fossil bones and ribs and named it Hydrargos. Then he sold it to Wood, who later named it the Great Zeuglodon. (© 19th Era 2/Alamy)
Despite a downpour, he had a new and sturdier fence installed and replaced the old tent with a much larger one that could hold more people. A huge flag was hung at the head of the tent to add color and grandeur to the space, but many people objected because it was a British flag. It was soon replaced by an even bigger American flag. Making things bigger and splashier seemed to be Wood’s style.
By Sunday, October 24, a wild, carnival atmosphere had taken hold at Newell’s farm. “Sunday was a crusher,” the Daily Standard reported. “The people began to go early, and kept going all day long. . . . Around the house and barns acres were covered with teams and wagons, and the road, for a long distance in either di
rection, was lined with them. It seemed as if such another jam never went to a show before, and it was with great difficulty that the line could be kept so that all could have a fair sight.”
Another change was that a strict fifteen-minute viewing time limit was introduced to ensure a steady flow of customers. To wrangle Sunday’s massive crowd of 2,300 people, Newell and his partners hired guards who, in the words of a Daily Courier reporter, “were compelled to bring all their powers of persuasion to effect their object.” They also hired a teenager to watch over their giant moneymaker at night.
The Cardiff Giant as it appeared on the cover of The American Goliah pamphlet. “Goliah” is a misprinting of the biblical giant’s real name of “Goliath.” (The New York State Historical Association Library)
The new owners rushed into print a thirty-two-page pamphlet to provide the definitive account of the Cardiff Giant . . . at fifteen cents a copy. Whoever wrote The American Goliah: A Wonderful Geological Discovery seems to have taken a cue from Billy Houghton’s melodramatic tent presentation. The words drip with emotion and importance: “The spectator gazes upon the grand old sleeper with feelings of admiration and awe. ‘Nothing like it has ever been seen,’ say all who have gazed upon it. ‘It is a great event in our lives to behold it,’ (is the universal verdict)—‘worth coming hundreds of miles for this alone.’” To help potential customers travel those hundreds of miles, the pamphlet provided specific railroad information and advice on hiring a carriage.